World Wide Views on Global Climate Change: Public Participation Model

A friend and adviser, Dick Sclove, is a U.S. representative on the massive World Wide Views on Global Climate Change initiative. No surprise that this is being organized by the Danish Board of Technology, science and technology policy advisers to Parliament. All of us in favor of reopening a similar agency here in the U.S. (to advise Congress) are fortunate to have Dick on our team as we call for the reopening of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, with mechanisms for public participation.

This morning, Dick and I spoke with Congressman Rush Holt’s legislative aide about this very issue. Holt is pushing for funds to reopen the OTA. I’m in contact with his office on a weekly basis to assist his efforts and help ensure the “public participation” piece of the equation does not get lost in this effort.

“I write to you to inform you about the existence of the project “World Wide Views on Global Warming”, which is making citizen participation meetings on global climate policies up to the COP15 UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, December 2009. The project now has 46 partner countries (representatives pictured, below), so it is really a global citizen participation.

Seen from both a technology assessment and a citizen participation point of view, this project is historical. I cannot recall that so many countries have joined before in order to make policy advice on the global level. Neither have we been able to find examples of advisory citizen consultation that embraces so many countries in the same process.”

Check it out and weigh in with your opinions! And consider joining the Facebook group in support of reopening an OTA with public participation.